Facts wrong in anti-union letter

Posted
Thursday, September 20, 2012 2:46 pm

To the Editor:

I don’t know if Richard Creeron deliberately misleads the public or he is just misinformed. In his letter to the Herald (“Union control is too strong,” Sept. 6-12), he wrongly states that the Taylor law and the Triborough law “enabled the government employees and the unions to get what they wanted through binding arbitration.” With few exceptions, the only municipal workers in New York that have the right to go to binding arbitration are police officers and firefighters. The arbitrator is not picked, as Mr. Creeron states, “by the union.” Both sides are sent a list of arbitrators and must agree on one.

The Triborough Doctrine states in part that if a contract expires, it stays in effect until a new one is in place. How else would you get the sides to sit down and negotiate? Finally, if he thinks the Nassau and Suffolk police departments have parity, he hasn’t looked lately.

Sid Tanenbaum, who lived in Woodmere and owned a metal-stamping shop in Far Rockaway, where he was known more for his charitable ways than his two-handed set shot, has been honored for the past 30 years with a basketball tournament that raises scholarship money for students in the Five Towns.